Navarro St Calbayog City Samar (21:28)

I finally got around to doing another video. What I decided I should and will do is walk down some of the streets downtown so y’all can see what it’s like on an everyday basis. Most of the streets I plan on doing will be the ones that run north and south because those streets have the most activity. I will only being doing the streets starting at Magsaysay Blvd and then the north/south streets to the west. I rarely go on the streets to the east of Magsaysay Blvd, but I have never had any problems when I did go. There just doesn’t seem to be a need to go that way. Maybe I’ll find a reason someday.

It sounds like I’m out of breath in the video, and maybe I am because I ain’t in the best of shape, but I didn’t feel out of breath that I know of. Of course I did walk all the way from our house to the downtown area before I started the walk down Navarro. I decided to do Navarro St. first for a couple of reasons. First because it is one of the medium traffic roads and I didn’t want to bore you right off with one of the less active streets to begin with or overwhelm you with too much activity. The second reason was because I went by Mar’s house first to get a safety pin for my shirt. The bottom button on my shirt is missing and when the wind blew it was showing off too much fat.

Whenever I do the 2 larger streets, Magsaysay Blvd and Rosales Ave, I will be doing only 1 side at a time because it will be too difficult to do all the swinging back and forth and it would not be a good video because the distance is too far really. If the going back and forth is even a problem on the smaller streets, I can do them one side at a time too. Let me know after you watch this video.

Some parts are loud due to all the activity going on downtown. Watch your sound, especially if you have your earplugs in.

Once again during the making of this video I think I said, “It’s on video” too much. It was not as much as the last video on my trip to the new market. I’ll work on trying to limit saying it so much.

Okay first I will put the link to the video, then I will explain some parts of the video. I hope that you will be able to following along somehow as the times come up on video. I should have the remarks in order with the way the video plays out.

From the south side of time Navarro St. beings at Rama St. All the other streets begin at Pido St, which is 2 blocks further south. I don’t know why Navarro St is 2 blocks shorter, but it doesn’t really matter.

I have so far been unable to find any further information on the apartments. I asked a couple of people but they were also unsure if they would be reopening.

I really didn’t think that anything needed to be said until about the 9:47 mark. Maybe I should have and will probably say more in future videos. At the 9:47 mark a little boy was asking me for money. At around 10:15 you can see his head when I turn towards him. I only gave him P5, although he probably would have been happy with P1. The P5 is only about .08 or .09 to me at the current rate (P43=$1.00). Normally I don’t give out money, but I was in a giving mood. As long as he doesn’t head to his friends and tell them, it really doesn’t bother me that much. I say that video thing a lot around this part.

As you can tell, when I have a video/camera I get even more attention than normal.

Around 12:30 I mention the Internet Cafes. There are plenty of them in and around town. I think the going rate is P30 (.70) per hour.

About the 15:30 mark some guy was trying to sell me a pen that had a calendar in it. He said that the normal donation was P180. At least that’s what I heard because I already knew I was not going to get one of them. I bought one before and the pen didn’t last long. Later, after I turned the video off, and I was heading home, a couple of young ladies also tried to sell me the same pens. They both told me that the standard donation was P50-P100. I still did not buy one though.

When I get in front of JustMar, it gets noisy again. I had to remove my headphones again because it was so loud. A few of the tricycle drivers that hang out in front of JustMar know that I am Lita’s husband and they know where we live. That’s good for Lita when she is shopping downtown by herself. She searches out those guys, but usually they find her first. They help her a lot and she likes that. Plus she doesn’t have to keep explaining how to get to the house across from the Ciriaco.

That “main street” around 18:16 is Gomez St. I was too busy dodging traffic to get to a street sign.

Mang Inasal at 18:55 is a decent place to eat. We’ve been there 3 times, although Lita doesn’t like their rice much.

The little stores that sell all the shoes and things are called Oki-Oki stores. I probably spelled that wrong, but it is pronounced as “Oh Kai” (long i).

On that last street (Orquin St) to the left @ 21:08 is where they are suppose to put up the Gaisano Mall, the old market place. I don’t see any building on there yet though.

Further north of Orquin St is the river and the bridge that is being used the most these days because the main bridge downtown on the highway is still not finished being repaired.

I hoped you enjoyed the video and I’m sure open to suggestions for any future videos.

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11 Comments

Myhun / 13 Jun 13

I think it’s better also to emphasize on some problems like lack of sidewalks where anybody can freely walk and vehicles illegally parked.I noticed that you were walking in the middle of the street instead of along the sidewalk. In such a way you may be able to catch the attention of local officials so that they can remove structures encroaching the sidewalks. Please post this also at Calbayog Tourism FB page so that it will be noticed. Thanks.

Have you been to the Philippines in the smaller towns? There are very few sidewalks downtown here. There are some on the 2 larger roads, but not even many there. In the smaller towns, there are no sidewalks at all. The norm is to walk along the side of the road. It is done everywhere in the Philippines except the big cities and even then, some people still do it. I can say that there are no sidewalks, but I doubt seriously if anything will be done about it, not in my life time anyway.

Yeah that’s kind of what I figured. I’ve got not problem walking down the street even though it gets crowded at times. I get through okay, but Lita needs help because she gets scared of the on coming vehicles, especially crossing the busy street. I guess she doesn’t trust them enough not to hit her.

Mark G. / 15 Jun 13

In some places it’s way too dark at night to walk down the middle of the street.

I will have more. I plan to do 1 or 2 per week until I get the major streets all done. I will try to think of something else to video after that. I hope to improve on my videos as I go along so if you have any suggestions, please suggest.